In Past Show

About Claire Sherman

Claire Sherman produces large-scale paintings and jewel-like drawings of natural landscapes and their details—a clump of dirt, blades of grass—that appear both representative and off-kilter. As she describes: “It is less about representing a specific place, and more about how paint can create an experience of a space that is both alluring and terrifying. My interest is in a space that falls apart as it begins to congeal and questions our relationship to the conventions of landscape.” Though she has recently started visiting the places she paints, most of her work is based on images she finds in kitschy nature books. Though Sherman convincingly captures the saturated colors and fine textures of nature, her works are anything but straightforward. She paints loosely and frames her views awkwardly, building ambivalence and abstraction into her alluringly strange visions of nature.